Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 9 July 2019 to Question 273333 on Stem cells: donors, what the targets are for the proportion of donors that must be from BAME backgrounds.

Since 2011 the Department has provided more than £26 million in financial support to NHS Blood and Transplant and Anthony Nolan to enable the establishment of a unified United Kingdom Stem Cell Registry and improve stem cell donation. This includes improving equity of access to unrelated donor stem cell transplantation for Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) patients through targeted recruitment to the UK Stem Cell Registry. This funding is in addition to the recruitment campaigns run by NHS Blood and Transplant, Anthony Nolan and other partners

In 2017 the Department funded recruitment for 6,000 extra donors from BAME background and continues to fund recruitment of genome-typed BAME donors who are then much more likely to donate. Working collaboratively to recruit more BAME donors with our partners, 22% of donors recruited in 2018-19 were of BAME background.¹

As part of the funding outlined above an Umbilical Cord Blood bank has been established. In its funding contribution the Department has set specific targets about the proportion of donors that must be from BAME background which is at least 35% and this target is being met.

¹ https://www.anthonynolan.org/sites/default/files/State_Of_The_Registry_201819.pdf